


Field of Stone

by linguamortua



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Frottage, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Pining, Secret Relationship, Semi-Public Sex, War, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 11:27:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19425034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: The first time Walt met Doc, he didn’t yet know that Doc would be their corpsman. A quick impression of blue eyes and a serious mouth was all he had time for before Doc frowned at Walt’s face and said, ‘Did you manage to hurt yourself already, or is that fucking herpes?’Walt is naive; Doc is oblivious. They collide hard in the desert.





	Field of Stone

**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation for this.
> 
> Title from the [Tanya Tucker song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfgUGgyVyN4), because Walt is a gentle country music boy.

Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party  
and seduced you  
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

Richard Siken, _[Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48158/litany-in-which-certain-things-are-crossed-out)_

* * *

The first time Walt met Doc, he didn’t yet know that Doc would be their corpsman. A quick impression of blue eyes and a serious mouth was all he had time for before Doc frowned at Walt’s face and said, ‘Did you manage to hurt yourself already, or is that fucking herpes?’

Walt’s hand had flown to his face, his lower lip. Only the day before, Ray, wielding a crowbar, had popped the top off a crate that Walt had been holding still for him. The momentum of the wooden lid had been unexpected and it had socked Walt in the face. It wasn’t even a real cut, just a graze.

‘It’s not herpes,’ he said quickly. ‘It was just an accident.’

‘Great,’ Doc had said, turning to drop his gear at his rack. ‘Bunch of careless kids. Can’t even wait for the war to start injuring yourselves.’

‘You’re going to have your work cut out for you, Doc,’ said Lieutenant Fick, coming up fast in his soft cover. His nose was sunburned, which Walt sympathised with because he always burned easily too. It was hard to believe that he was nearly the same age as the LT, because the LT always had everything totally under control.

‘Yeah, that was implied,’ Doc said.

‘Hasser, this is Tim Bryan, our corpsman. Doc. Got in late last night with the surgeon. Be nice to him; he might save all our asses out there.’

Walt thought it was the LT’s wry ‘might’ that made Doc smile. It definitely wasn’t anything Walt had said. But he noticed the smile, and how Doc’s mouth went from serious to lush, and he swallowed hard.

Walt already missed home and he missed his dog Scooter, and real beds and real showers, and the freedom to shoot some hoops or grab a beer with a friend. He had resigned himself early to missing all those things. In a way it was cool; he was really living this life, running with the big dogs. It meant something to miss home and amenities. He had predicted, too, that he would miss sex, or at least jerking off in privacy. That hadn’t happened yet, because everything was so new and intense that he hadn’t felt the need. The guys who’d been deployed before didn’t waste any time. Walt couldn’t admit it to anyone, but he couldn’t even get himself off in a toilet cubicle with a locking door right now.

Except that was maybe probably about to change. Doc Bryan had made Walt’s self-sacrificing celibacy a little more interesting.

‘It’s, uh, good to have you,’ he said stupidly to Doc’s broad back as Doc got his bedroll and gear squared away.

‘Sure,’ said Doc, with a vague nod. He didn’t turn around or look at Walt. He didn’t even know Walt’s name. He’d basically forgotten him already.

* * *

‘Not bad, Hasser,’ said Doc a couple of days later. A bunch of them were out on the quad, huddled in their teams around guys pretending to be wounded. Scuttlebutt had it that Doc had approached the LT with an attitude about how unprepared they all were in the event of serious injury and limited access to a corpsman. The LT had given his blessing for ‘extra training’. That was how Walt was spending an hour of what should have been his leisure time holding a gauze pad over Ray Person’s fake gunshot wound to the thigh. Some of the guys had bitched, but Walt was having fun. And now he was having even more fun, because Doc noticed that he was doing a good job. When Doc said his name, he got that delighted little spring of emotion that he got whenever anyone he liked said his name out loud. He wondered if everyone felt it, or if it was just him.

Walt had always liked this kind of stuff. Learning a new skill, fixing something. In moments of downtime in bootcamp, he had thought a lot about why he was there and although the answer sometimes varied, the fact that he was never bored was always pretty high on the list.

‘Doc?’ Ray said in a nasal, high-pitched voice. ‘Hasser’s touching my balls.’ He lisped it out: _Hather_ , _ballth_.

‘No I’m not, asshole,’ Walt hissed at him. ‘Stop making it weird.’

‘You’re making it weird by trying to jerk me off, dude.’ Ray raised his voice. ‘Hey, everyone! Hasser’ll give you a handjob if you get shot near the dick!’

‘Y’all gonna bleed to death if y’all thinking about your dicks and not listening,’ said Poke loudly. ‘I don’t wanna die ‘cause you motherfuckers wanna fuck each other.’

‘Knock it off,’ Brad said, already sounding tired. Brad seemed to know everything Doc was telling them already. He had been one of the guys complaining about wasting his time. He called over to Doc. ‘Ten minutes until chow, Doc.’

‘Fine. Class dismissed,’ said Doc. And then, under his breath, ‘idiots.’

Ray revived as if by magic, and everyone started to disperse. Manimal was complaining loudly about the likelihood of something shitty for chow, and Rudy was attempting to soothe him by telling him they were blessed to eat better than the local population. Q-Tip was riffing with Christeson, trying out some new lyrics to a Tupac song. Walt thought he could be friends with them, except he never knew any of the pop songs they knew so he didn’t know how to start a conversation with them yet.

Walt hesitated for a moment, watching them leave. Then he stopped by Doc, who was packing up. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘This was neat. Sorry the guys were such dicks.’

Doc gave him the look where Walt felt like he was laughing at a joke Walt didn’t understand. ‘I’ll survive the insult,’ he said. He picked up his pack and hooked it over one shoulder for the short walk back to their tent. Walt walked with him, because Doc hadn’t said he couldn’t. ‘You’ve got a decent head on your shoulders,’ Doc told him. ‘Don’t lose your shit in an emergency and you’ll be fine.’ He paused. ‘I’m setting the bar for ‘fine’ very fucking low.’

That seemed to be how Doc was with most people. Even when he was saying something nice, he was a little too honest. When you thought about it, that wasn’t such a bad thing. But Walt kind of wished that Doc had left off that last bit.

‘Cheer up,’ Doc told him, thumping him on the back. ‘Soon you’ll be getting shot at, and then you’ll really have something to be miserable about.’

‘Great,’ said Walt, unconvinced, but he couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. If Doc was fucking with you, that meant you were okay.

* * *

Doc smiled with one side of his mouth first, like he was trying not to let anyone see him amused. Even in the dark, he did it. Walt could hardly see him but he could see the smile. Why he was smiling, Walt couldn’t think.

He’d been trapped inside a weird, claustrophobic dream in which he was being slowly smothered by tent canvas. In the background, someone had been yelling orders at him, but the orders were in a foreign language and anyway Walt couldn’t move any of his limbs. Vaguely he had had the sense that there was impending danger closing in on him. It was his job, somehow, to deal with it. He was suffocating, and so he lashed out with his legs to try to free himself.

And then he’d woken up in darkness, tangled up in layers of sleeping bag and liner, with Doc’s hand over his mouth. He’d struggled briefly, despite himself.

‘Calm the fuck down,’ Doc had whispered. Around them were the heavy snores of men fast asleep, and outside boots patrolling past. ‘You were having a nightmare.’

Walt realised that he was off his bedroll and that his feet were all up in Doc’s personal space. It wasn’t like they got a lot of room to rack out. Getting in someone’s space was a mortal sin. With his heart pounding in the aftermath of his dream, Walt reached up to peel Doc’s hand off his face.

‘I’m okay,’ he whispered back. He pulled himself upright and untangled himself, then wiped his sweaty face on his shirt. He’d stashed a bottle of water in the crate that served as a nightstand. Finding and chugging it brought his body back to the waking world. He looked over to find Doc still watching him.

‘Get a lot of nightmares?’ Doc still spoke in a whisper.

‘Hardly ever,’ Walt said.

‘Nervous energy,’ Doc pronounced. ‘Jerk off before bed.’

‘What?’ hissed Walt.

‘Or go for a run, if you prefer that.’

And that was when Doc had smiled at him, flash of white teeth in the dark. Walt was grateful that it was night so that he could busy himself lying back down and getting his sleeping bag comfortable around him. He didn’t have to reply, and anyway, they were trying to be quiet. So it was better if he didn’t say anything. He rolled onto his back, even though he preferred to sleep on his side. Then he let his eyes flutter closed. He hoped that it looked natural and not like he was desperately trying to avoid addressing Doc’s suggestion, or his smile.

The next day he just tried not to look at Doc too obviously, or like, at all. He wanted to, but he couldn’t trust his face. It was easier if he told himself that it had just been part of his weird dream. He got on with his day and very carefully made sure he didn’t have to be around Doc, just to let the residual weirdness drain out of his system.

After lunch, in the worst heat of the day when they were all allowed to be under canvas doing nothing, Walt was rereading a letter from home when a shadow fell across the page.

‘Hasser,’ said Doc from above.

‘You know you can call me Walt,’ said Walt, looking over the top of his letter. Doc didn’t acknowledge that. He crouched down at the end of Walt’s little space. He was boxed in between a bunch of extra tent gear on one side, and Doc’s bed and their crates on the other. When Walt was lying on his belly, nobody could see him or creep up on him. This was an important consideration when racking out with a bunch of dudes who liked to sneak attack each other. Now Doc filled up the fourth side of Walt’s space.

‘You busy?’

‘Not really. Did you need something, Doc?’ Walt tucked his letter into the back pocket of his pack, where nobody was likely to go creeping for it. He rolled up to sitting, looping his arms around one knee. They were very close, so Doc could talk very quietly and still be heard.

‘Want to do something about that nervous energy?’ he asked. There was something hungry about the way Doc was looking at Walt. It made him feel warm. Walt could say exactly how, but he knew immediately exactly what Doc was suggesting.

‘That’s,’ Walt said, stopping to swallow, ‘not allowed.’

‘I didn’t ask if it was allowed, I asked if you wanted it.’

Walt remembered to breathe.

‘You shouldn’t be asking,’ he said. He was damned if he was going to get busted out of the Corps before he got some.

‘And you shouldn’t be telling,’ countered Doc, ‘but you want to tell me.’ He looked like he was having fun, his eyes bright and alert. Doc basically never looked like he was having fun. There were times when Walt really wanted to make him laugh, but not even Ray could do that and Ray Person was _hilarious_ , in a terrible kind of way. So maybe Doc’s idea of fun was something else entirely.

‘What were you thinking?’ Walt said, because very clear in his mind right now was the memory of the company surgeon saying something Walt didn’t catch, and Doc throwing his head back to laugh. And then walking along the line of tents still smiling, with a rolling, easy quality to his stride. Perhaps if Walt went along with this, he could bring about something similar in Doc. He liked making people happy. He always had.

‘Come with me.’

Walt stood up and followed Doc through the tent village that was Camp Mathilda. He tried to look normal, whatever that looked like. Garza was tossing around a football with a couple of guys and called him over.

‘Busy,’ Walt shouted back, pointing at Doc with a ‘what can you do?’ expression on his face. He trailed along in Doc’s wake until, round the back of the vehicle bays and all the tents for the mechanical work and storage, they came across a solitary john.

‘Nobody here after lunch,’ said Doc, and he nudged Walt somewhere up by the shoulder blade with his elbow. ‘Go on.’

In a mild state of disbelief, but also strangely excited, Walt strolled across the patch of sand between the tents and the john and went inside. He didn’t lock the door, just held it closed with two fingers on the lock. It smelled like warm plastic and chemicals, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the long line of identical cubicles over by the chow tent.

Walt heard boots getting closer and Doc’s tuneless humming. He pressed himself back against the wall so that nobody would see him when Doc came inside, carefully moving himself around the door to block sight. Was it bad, Walt thought, that he was using his knowledge of sightlines to get away with this, whatever _this_ was turning out to be?

‘Really?’ Walt asked. ‘In here?’ He laughed nervously.

‘Don’t tell me you’re picky, Hasser,’ said Doc. He had dropped his voice low, and already was undoing his belt. ‘If you’re going to bitch—’

‘I’m not,’ said Walt hurriedly, and he mirrored Doc, because that seemed like the thing to do.

If Walt had known this morning when he woke up that today would be the day he touched another guy’s dick for the first time, he might have been nervous about it. But until Doc grabbed his wrist and guided Walt’s hand there, Walt couldn’t have predicted it. And it turned out that Doc’s dick felt pretty much the same as Walt’s; warm, smooth, getting harder as Walt jacked it a couple of times. And every time Walt stroked it, Doc’s breath rattled out in a way that told Walt he was getting it right. Right enough.

When Walt thought about it later (and he thought about it a lot, later), he realised that it wasn’t a whole lot different than fingering a girl. You just listened to how someone breathed, what they said. Watched how they moved, felt them getting into it or not. If you liked someone, it was easy.

It was easy to know that what Doc wanted was to be jerked off fast and firmly, and to feel Walt’s breath on his neck. And Doc had Walt figured out too. His hand on Walt was just right, his thumb rolling over the head of Walt’s cock on the upstroke. Walt was leaking a little. Doc’s thumb was slippery-good and slid over him in perfect, consistent rhythm. Walt couldn’t help groaning, even though he knew they had to be quiet.

‘Shh,’ said Doc, and put his hand over Walt’s mouth. Walt screwed his eyes closed tight so that he couldn’t see the way Doc’s face was flushed and sweating, or the way he was watching Walt. Nobody had ever looked at Walt like that. Or maybe they had, but Walt had only ever had sex in the dark. Walt thought deliriously that this was the second time that Doc had shut Walt up with a hand over his mouth, and that maybe that was what Doc was into. That he’d been into it when he’d done it before, and Walt just hadn’t known.

His hand moved faster on Doc. He was getting there, getting close, and he wanted them to come together. He loved that. Nothing got him off faster or better than someone’s mouth on his, stuttering and desperate when they were about to come. If Doc had been kissing him it would have been perfect. Doc’s hand was still over his mouth, and Doc had given up on looking at Walt and was resting his forehead on the arm he had braced against the wall. His eyes were closed now.

There was no warning; abruptly Doc pressed his mouth to his own forearm, swallowed a sound, and then Walt’s hand was wet. His hand hesitated on Walt, lost the rhythm and found it again. Walt had thought he was ready to go but he really had to think about it. The plastic wall had an angle in it that was digging into his back. It was distracting. Walt looked at the faded stubble down the side of Doc’s face in front of his ear, and the firm line of his throat. It was right there. He could see the pulse beating. Hammering fast. Walt had done that. And Doc’s body was pressed close to him. They were chest to chest, almost breath to breath. Doc’s eyes were down, looking at his own hand on Walt, and then they came up and looked at Walt’s mouth.

Doc made eye contact right as Walt came. Perhaps it was Doc really looking at him that made Walt come, even. He moaned, stifled against Doc’s palm, and ground his hips into Doc’s. It felt like falling over a cliff. He was unsteady afterwards, overheated and a bit stupid.

Doc gave him a sharp grin and squeezed Walt’s dick, which made Walt twist away. Too much. Only then did Doc take his hand off Walt’s mouth. Walt could finally suck in the big breath he wanted.

He was going to say something but Doc had turned away and was cleaning himself off and zipping up. There was a canteen in his thigh pocket and he poured water over each hand, leaning over the toilet hole to do it. Afterwards, Doc grabbed Walt’s hip and gave it a quick pinch. Like Walt would ruffle his dog’s ears. Affectionate but careless.

‘Clean up and give me a head start,’ Doc told him, and then slipped around the door and out. Walt had the presence of mind to put the toe of his boot against the door while he wiped himself and pumped out hand sanitiser. He counted slowly to ten and only then did he leave the cubicle, hoping that if he looked flushed that it was just the heat. He carefully didn’t look around when he left. That would make it seem like he was looking for someone, or expecting someone to notice him.

He tried to act like he’d just taken a piss. Just a regular bodily function. Which was true. Walt just wished that Doc hadn’t acted like that was all it was.

* * *

Once would have just been a strange occurrence that was vaguely unreal after the fact. That happened a lot in the Corps, for various reasons. Walt tried not to worry too hard about the inexplicable events. Besides, he worked with Ray Person, so sometimes you just had to accept the crazy. But Doc was too intense and too close to not worry about. And what had happened between them felt extremely real.

It continued to feel extremely real. For the first day or so afterwards, Doc treated him with the same offhand tolerance that he used with everyone else. Walt decided not to be hurt by it. Doc didn’t have to be nice to everyone. Not being nice was his thing, in the same way that humping people was Ray’s thing, and being super hot was Rudy’s thing. (Walt’s thing was country music.) Walt had noticed early on that everyone developed their thing, their niche, their way to stand out just a little bit in an environment that was inevitably about fitting in.

Then Doc started noticing him again. His eyes caught Walt’s when the rest of the guys were cutting up and being assholes. When Walt caught some time to reread his mail from home, Doc was lying in his own space reading Hemingway. But not really reading. Walt just knew.

When they all got up after chow in one big unit, all the regular guys looking at them, and walked back across the camp to their tents, Doc fell into step next to Walt.

Somehow, Walt’s pace changed to match Doc’s and they got slower, slower, all the way down to a stroll, by some kind of mutual and unspoken agreement. When they passed the storage tent with a bunch of the ammo and gear for the humvees, Doc touched his elbow to Walt’s arm as if by accident. Walt knew then to seamlessly step right into the tent without a word. It was very dark and it smelled like warm metal and dust. Doc pressed his hand between Walt’s shoulder blades and whispered directions.

‘Ahead four paces. Hand out in front of you.’ Walt’s hand met wooden crates. ‘Left two steps then right.’ Walt’s questing hand came up against something metal and he ran it all the way along to a little nook, where the boxes were so close around them that Walt could basically feel them wherever he leaned.

Doc hustled him all the way into the corner and grabbed Walt’s dick through his pants. Walt involuntarily arched his back into the touch, his hands pressed against the warm metal boxes behind him. They were chest to chest, Walt able to feel the contour of Doc’s body through their t-shirts. Then Doc seemed to change his mind, taking hold of Walt’s hips and turning him around.

‘What,’ Walt began, then Doc made an impatient sound his throat. Walt shut up. He rested his palms against the boxes, then made them a pillow for his forehead. Doc tapped Walt’s left boot with his. Walt obediently moved his foot, stepping wider. Like Doc was going to body search him. He almost expected Doc’s hands up his ribs or the inside of his thighs. He kind of liked the idea.

What he didn’t expect was Doc’s hand’s to come around and briskly undo his belt, or for Doc to shove his pants down to mid-thigh. His pants dragged his underwear down, too. It was dim in the tent. Doc wouldn’t be able to see much. And then, everyone had seen each other buck naked before and nobody really thought anything of it. Even so, Walt felt exposed. Doc’s hand dragged a warm path up his left thigh and over his ass; it paused for a minute on Walt’s lower back. Walt considered touching himself, but for some reason he couldn’t move. He was just there, legs spread, waiting.

He jumped when he felt the soft pressure of Doc’s thighs against his, and the unmistakable feeling of Doc’s almost-hard cock up between his ass cheeks. Walt held his breath. Behind him, Doc settled in closer. He moved his hand to the crates by Walt’s face, then his other hand fumbled down Walt’s belly to find Walt’s dick.

 _You can't,_ Walt wanted to say, but he couldn't make himself make a noise. Doc couldn't fuck him like this. It wasn't possible. And of course he didn't; he just started rocking his hips against Walt. Walt squeezed his eyes closed. Already he was coming up on his toes a little, tensing up. Not in a bad way—or at least, he thought not. Overexcited. Doc’s hand was exactly what Walt hadn’t known he’d wanted. Firm but not too hard, confident. Walt didn’t have to do anything but brace himself against the crates.

It wasn’t going to last long for Walt, because the slide of Doc’s dick was already making him crazy. It had no right to feel that good. He felt like he was getting fucked even though Doc’s cockhead was just rubbing over his balls and asshole. Against his back, Doc’s chest was expanding and contracting like bellows. Walt had to brace himself pretty hard to stop his body from hitting the crates and making a noise. When he jerked off alone he tensed his body up when he was about to come. Doing that now was having the same effect. It was bad—he wanted to hold on longer. He turned his head to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of Doc out of the edge of his vision. Hoping that Doc would lean in and kiss him.

He didn’t.

Instead, Doc jerked him off until Walt came with a full-body writhe that made his calves burn.

'Shh, shh,' Doc told him softly, because Walt had made a desperate noise that was half nonsense and half Doc's name. The low rumble of Doc's voice gave Walt a little aftershock; he came a bit more, even, feeling himself spurt into Doc's hand.

Doc took his hand away and paused, and moved, and then his cock was back against Walt's ass, but wet. With a shiver of horrified pleasure, Walt realised that it was his own jizz. When Doc started moving again he was very slick and smooth. It didn't take him long to get off. Just like before, the only way Walt could tell was from the quiet catch of breath and the stillness, and then the feeling of wetness on his own skin.

There was something feral in the way Doc smiled at him afterwards, out in the light, like he wanted to take a bite out of Walt. It should have been sexy. But even though the sex had felt good at the time, Walt somehow couldn’t make himself smile back.

* * *

Almost as soon as they stepped off, Doc’s smile began to take on the aspect of something frightening. He smiled less, although nobody else smiled less, so there was no reason that Walt could see why Doc would be the odd one out. When he did smile, it was never at Walt. It wasn’t usually at anyone at all. It was more of a grimace than a smile.

There was something inside Doc that was angry a lot of the time. Even back at Mathilda Walt had known that. The stress of deployment made everyone act a little different, a little weird. Except for a handful of guys with real experience, like Brad and Pappy and the Gunny, everyone was on edge. Then Brad traded Garza for Walt and things got weirder, because Walt had to spend a ton of time with Trombley.

Once when Walt was in middle school, a kid had brought his dad’s hunting crossbow into school in his backpack. Someone found out and told the principal, and half the school got evacuated. The kid ended up in therapy or something, Walt couldn’t remember. Anyway, Trombley reminded him of that kid. Maybe Trombley was in the best possible place to be a crazy motherfucker. But the seat next to him was too close for Walt. It was always a relief to be up on the gun, out of the cab, even though the wind and sand whipped at him and his legs hurt from standing all day, and his lower back ached from staying balanced. It was boring up there but if his attention slipped he might miss something or fall, so he had to stay focused.

Plus, Reporter was recording everything in his notebook. So Walt couldn’t say what he really wanted to say to Trombley, in case Reporter wrote it down and published it, and then Walt’s dad read it and was disappointed in him.

Even on the first day on Brad's team, things felt strange. They rumbled across endless miles of sand, Ray talking endlessly and Trombley saying weird shit, and Reporter asking dumb questions that everyone knew the answers to.

From up on top the humvee, Walt could hear Reporter talking. Reporter’s name was actually Evan, but he’d already been gifted a nickname—or maybe cursed with one—and Walt definitely wasn’t going to be the guy to go against the grain. Even the LT didn’t call the guy Evan. The LT didn’t really address Reporter by any name, although privately Walt wanted to hear the phrase ‘Beaver Hunt’ come out of his mouth at least once.

‘Hey, Reporter?’ Ray was saying from the driver’s seat, probably turning around and not looking at the road as usual. Reporter’s voice stopped. Ray’s voice dropped quieter then, so Walt couldn’t hear what he was saying. The lift and fall of Ray talking was audible, but not the words. It would be way less boring up on the gun if Walt could hear the chatter below; but then again, sometimes that would mean listening to Trombley.

So time stretched on and on for Walt, and war turned out to be amazingly boring a lot of the time. It was roads and pausing in empty fields, and roads and waving to occasional passers-by, and roads and dust and roads and sun and roads, with only tiny settlements visible off in the distance, and nothing to do but watch the roads go by.

Even when they finally got orders to roll through a town, Walt was still strangely bored. It was as though his brain had forgotten how to focus on anything but miles of desert and roads.

‘Watch your sectors, gentleman,’ Brad called from below, loud enough that Walt could hear. ‘Walt?’

‘I’m good,’ Walt called back down. He slid the bolt on his gun and turned it both ways through its full range of motion, just to make sure. Then he braced himself and checked his SAW one-handed. They rattled and shook along the road, the town ahead getting closer and closer.

Walt felt fine, totally fine, up until the moment they rolled past the first buildings. Then the nerves kicked in. Time behaved strangely in combat, Walt learned. As the victor rumbled through narrow dirt streets, Walt had just enough time to remember how alone and exposed he was before the shooting started. The first volley mostly dug up the ground along the humvee, but all the same Walt found himself involuntarily flinching away. He was gripping the gun so hard his hands hurt, clutching it half to keep himself upright on the roof. Ray was driving like a maniac and it was hard to balance.

It wasn’t until Brad yelled that Walt realised he wasn’t shooting.

‘Walt? Why aren’t you fucking firing?’ Brad screamed from below.

‘Sorry!’ Walt shouted back, and then he jolted into action, feeling like a moron because he had one job, one single thing to do, and he’d frozen up. As soon as Brad got him started, Walt remembered that he _did_ know what to do after all. From the buildings along the north side of the street he could see sporadic muzzle flashes. Up ahead, Manimal had his fifty cal trained on the far windows. Walt picked the near side and aimed, braced himself, opened up.

Chunks of mortar flew. The muzzle flashes became fewer and fewer and finally stopped. As they turned the corner at the end of the street, Walt kept his gun trained on the windows all the way around to his nine, when he couldn’t turn any more.

And they made it through. Somehow, every single one of Second got out the other side without a scratch. Walt's knees were weak with relief when he slid down through the hatch. Everyone was hollering at each other, but Walt had to sit alone in the back seat for a minute and breathe, just so he didn't fall out the door and flat on his face.

‘Now we’re in a fuckin’ war,’ said Ray appreciatively.

‘We’re fucking them up,’ agreed Trombley.

And Brad just looked like it was a normal day. Once the adrenaline faded and Walt had something to eat, and drank off a bottle of water without stopping, it _did_ feel like a normal day. They’d killed people for sure. Walt had probably killed at least one other human being. That should have felt strange, but he hadn’t seen it so it was hard to imagine it really happening. It was more like a video game, or a war movie, where you knew it wasn’t real even if it was gory. It felt so normal.

* * *

‘You should eat.’ Walt could hardly believe he was saying it.

He could hardly believe anything that had happened. Two injured kids, Doc’s fury over the platoon’s collateral damage. Walt was getting used to the sight of blood and death and injury, but this was somehow worse. He couldn’t define how it was worse. They’d killed a bunch of people. In the end, it was something about watching the LT and Brad and Doc squaring off about casevacing the shepherds that made Walt somehow feel nauseous.

Afterwards was even worse, because Doc retreated to his grave down the side of his humvee and started cleaning his weapon with a horrible kind of concentration. Once he’d done that, he stripped it back down and started again. Nobody dared approach him. He was wound up so tightly all the time, and Walt thought this might be the time that he finally snapped on someone. Nobody would go near him; but then, Walt thought, watching Doc over the top of a crumpled Hustler that he wasn’t reading, Doc wasn’t taking anybody else to private corners to do things with them. He handed Trombley back the magazine.

‘Thanks, man.’

Trombley stared at him, confusion written all over his face. ‘But you didn’t even jerk off?’

‘Yeah.’ Walt was already hopping down off the humvee and slinging his gun over his shoulder. Idly he remembered when it had been hard to stop his gun from sliding around and getting in the way, but now manoeuvring it was like breathing. He walked along the line to Doc’s humvee. Everyone was giving him some space, sitting on top of it or on the other side.

Walt sat down against the front wheel like it was no big deal, and took a drink from his water bottle. Then he emptied all his pockets and repacked his shit neatly. And after that he took T’s copy of _Great American Poems of the Twentieth Century_ and started to read like there was nothing at all weird about what he was doing.

‘I know what you’re doing,’ Doc said shortly, before Walt was even halfway through a Langston Hughes poem.

‘Reading?’ Walt asked innocently, without looking up. He read back a few lines, because he really liked the way they sounded. About three feet away, Doc was aggressively writing notes in his notebook. Walt could hear the pen squeaking. He let Doc write, and didn’t say anything. He wanted to say a lot of things, but it didn’t seem right.

‘I don’t want to fucking talk about it,’ Doc said, after a stretch of silence that might have been five minutes. It was deeply uncomfortable, anyway.

‘Neither do I,’ said Walt. He looked over at Doc. ‘Because I’m reading.’

‘Read by your own humvee,’ said Doc sourly.

‘Ray Person,’ said Walt, which was all that was necessary to say. With perfect timing, Ray started yelling something in the middle distance.

‘I don’t need advice either,’ said Doc.

‘Okay.’

Doc finally lay down in his grave and closed his eyes. Walt turned his page as calmly as he could. He definitely wasn’t going to look over at Doc, because he wasn’t sure if he could just look. What he wanted, actually, was to crawl across the feet and inches between them and tuck his body into Doc’s little sleeping space. He wanted to curl their bodies together and throw an arm over Doc, so that even if he couldn’t say anything useful or change anything about what had happened, his presence would somehow be comforting.

Eventually, Doc cleared his throat.

‘What are you reading?’

‘Poems,’ said Walt. He turned the book so that Doc could see the cover.

‘He’s reading poems,’ said Doc to nobody, narrating out loud in that way he had.

‘It’s T’s book.’

‘Figures.’ Doc paused, and shifted on the ground, and then sighed. Walt turned a page to a poem about a woman who was a witch—or at least, he thought that was what it was about. It was very abstract. Doc spoke up again. ‘Why poems?’

‘Why not?’ Walt tucked his dirty thumb into the book to hold the page, and looked over at Doc. ‘I guess I didn’t really listen in English class. Like T says, you gotta keep learning.’

Doc gave him a strange, piercing look, like he was seeing Walt for the first time. Walt tried to return it without blushing or making it weird. He couldn’t hold it for long; he looked back at his book and turned the page, even though he hadn’t finished the previous poem yet.

‘What are you learning out here?’ Doc asked finally. He didn’t mean the poetry. Walt had to think about it for a while, watching the horizon as he did so. It was always a good habit to be aware of your surroundings. Brad never stopped looking out for himself and everyone around him, even when he wasn’t standing watch. Was that the kind of answer Doc was looking for?

‘I don’t know yet,’ he said finally, truthfully. He watched a wisp of cloud drift by. Sometimes things were amazingly beautiful out here. ‘Don’t think I’ll know until I get home.’

‘Read a poem,’ Doc said suddenly. Walt internally sighed with relief. He turned the page. The next poem stretched for the whole page.

‘It’s pretty long,’ he warned.

‘I’ve got time.’

‘Okay. This is, uh, Armored Hearts.’ The title made him blush for some reason. It felt like being a teenager and getting caught reading a Boys’ Own Adventure book that was too young for you. There was nothing wrong with it exactly, but it was weird to say out loud. He began. ‘ _I’d been awakened before by hammers cracking across the pond, but who’d be building at dawn? On a Sunday?_ ’

From the quiet sound to his left, Walt knew that Doc had turned his head to watch him read. He tried not to pay any attention. Instead, he focused on getting the poem right, paying attention to where a sentence kept on going onto a new line. Enjoying the shape and sound of the words, each repeated sound, saying _he labored in his boat, knotting his lines, tying his bait, easing out the jugs like a rope of pearls_. This was a good poem, Walt thought as he read, because it felt like being at home with his dad, in the workshop or the yard or out on the river in the boat.

‘Not bad,’ said Doc dryly.

‘Hey, these are the _great_ American poets,’ said Walt. He turned the cover towards Doc. ‘See? It says so right here.’

‘I stand corrected.’ The corners of Doc’s mouth twitched so very slightly that only someone who had spent a lot of time looking at it would notice him almost-smiling. Walt noticed. Then Doc slid back down into his grave and resettled himself comfortably. ‘Go and get some rest, Hasser,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

* * *

Days later, it was Walt’s turn to be not fine. He lay curled in his grave, dusty and sore. He could feel the unnatural sick sweat prickling out from every pore. Didn’t need a corpsman to know that he was ill. Anyway, pretty much everyone in camp had the shits. The only good thing about it was that Walt was too sick to stand watch. He’d wanted to, because Brad had barely slept in three days. But Brad had ordered him to lie down, so Walt had obeyed. If his stomach hadn’t hurt so much, Walt might actually have been able to get some sleep. Instead he lay with his head pillowed on his arm and his other arm curled protectively around his belly.

At least he hadn’t shit himself yet. That was something. He could hear Stiney a few yards away and it didn’t sound good. Some of the other guys were having a worse night than Walt, for sure. Brad had told him to drink water, so he was sipping from a plastic bottle. The bottle had sat in the warm humvee all day so the water tasted like plastic too. Walt was fighting to keep it down. Every few minutes he propped himself up on his elbow for another lukewarm, unpleasant mouthful.

He was shivering. They didn’t tell you about this in training. Earlier on, Kocher had laughed with Brad about some time in Afghanistan when half the platoon got a bad batch of chicken MREs. And Pappy had a story about norovirus in boot camp. If Walt made it through his deployment, he guessed that pretty soon he’d be telling his own dysentery tales.

Walt might have drifted off for a minute, because suddenly Doc was there, crouched beside Walt’s grave with his SAW cradled in his arms.

‘Hi,’ said Walt, peering up at him through the fading twilight. He couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather see right now. Doc reached down and pinched the skin on the back of Walt’s hand.

‘How you doing down there?’

‘I feel like ass.’

‘Yeah, you and everyone else. You’re not dehydrated. Keep drinking water.’

‘That’s what Brad said.’

‘Sometimes Colbert has moments of clarity.’ Doc pulled a plastic pot of pills from a leg pocket and rattled them at Walt until Walt got with the program and held his hand out. Doc shook two into his palm. ‘Take these and try to sleep.’

Walt obediently took the pills, hating the way they slid down his throat hard and bitter. He never had liked taking pills. He liked having Doc around, though, so even though he didn’t really want to know the answer, he asked, ‘Why did we all get sick?’

Doc shrugged. ‘Bad hygiene. Everyone jammed together. It happens.’ He pulled himself to his feet. It was obvious how tired he was. ‘Keep drinking water, tell me if you start shitting blood.’

‘Okay,’ said Walt, mutely horrified that shitting blood might be on the cards. Doc delivered the information as if it wasn’t important. Like he’d said it a dozen times. Actually, Walt reflected, he probably had. Walt didn’t feel good about that; like Doc was treating him like any of the other guys.

 _Stop it_ , he told himself firmly. They all had their jobs to do. He couldn’t expect special treatment. It would be too obvious.

* * *

Ray was talking about sex, and Poke was talking over him about his wife, so Walt figured it was as good a time as any. He was scrubbing the sand out of the fifty cal _again_ which meant that his hands were busy. Looking like he didn’t care too much. It was a skill he was trying to cultivate through careful observation; studied detachment, looking alert but unruffled. Brad had that shit _down_. Nailing it before they went home was pretty high on Walt’s personal goals list.

Walt waited for his opening. There was some discussion of eating pussy: how (Ray), why (Trombley) and how often (Poke). Then Ray said something about tantric sex, and everyone laughed at him. And then Poke told them all in a real Poke kind of a way about how there was nothing better than knowing your partner was into you _body and fucking soul, man_.

‘What if you don’t know?’ Walt asked. He squinted down the slide just in case anyone got the impression that he cared a whole lot about the answer.

‘How can you not fucking know?’ Poke asked. ‘The minute I met my wife I knew.’

‘Brother,’ said Rudy, contributing for the first time, ‘you gotta look inside yourself. Respect yourself and your partner as complete divine beings. The universe is working through you both, man. You just have to listen to it.’ Everyone except Walt and Pappy laughed.

‘That is such trite fucking bullshit,’ said Ray.

‘Well, what do _you_ know,’ said Walt rhetorically, which he regretted immediately because now he sounded like he cared.

‘Hey, at least I have a girlfriend.’

‘Nobody’s ever met her,’ Walt said venomously into his gun.

‘You jealous, babe?’ asked Ray, pouting ridiculously. He got up to reach into the back of the humvee and idly humped the side of Walt’s head on the way past. ‘Ray’s got enough love for you, too.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,’ Walt said, pushing him away, and everyone laughed. Walt felt pretty good about that, making folks laugh. Sometimes when they were all hanging out like this, and he’d got a good MRE, and he had a job to do—well, it felt fun, somehow. He liked the camaraderie. He liked all the different people with their weird habits and preferences and attitudes, and how they had each other’s backs.

Sure, it was war and his feet were nasty, and Ray kept dry humping him like a dog. But still Walt smiled into his gun.

* * *

It was war, and everyone was miserable or wounded or dead, so it wasn’t like Walt could complain. Even if he could, there was nobody to complain to. But Walt felt fucked up every day now, simultaneously lonely and crammed in with too many people that he couldn’t escape. He was sad all the time. When he first learned that they were stepping off, he thought about how it was going to feel to kill people, or get shot. He hadn’t realised that regular sadness would be something he’d feel when nightly the sky was alive with arty, and a long row of tanks shipped wounded Marines back to Shock Trauma.

Then Walt fucked up, and killed a guy when he was supposed to fire a warning shot.

Regular sadness about some guy seemed out of place. Like maybe there was a threshold of suffering after which Walt’s priorities were wrong.

The car didn’t stop.

And Walt was sad about that, and he was sad about Doc, too. Those were just the facts. When Walt was feeling good about the world, he liked to look on the bright side. If there was a silver lining to his current misery, it was that nobody could ever guess how he felt about Doc because of—the other thing. Even tired as he was, he wasn’t about to blurt anything out about _that_.

It was stupid, but in some nonsensical way Walt wished that he’d been shot. Or maybe taken some shrapnel. Not because he liked being injured, but because he hurt so much inside that he wanted to hurt where everyone could see it, too. If he got a really good wound - one that looked gnarly, but not enough to get benched, he thought - then people would treat him like he was hurting. He was ashamed to even think it. He was ashamed because by ‘people’ he meant ‘Doc’.

He was even more ashamed for caring more about his own feelings than the dude he shot. Poke said that all they fucking did was kill people and it wasn’t a big deal. And Doc had to save lives and take them too, so it wasn’t like Walt was alone in it.

Brad came by and looked in on Walt as he lay curled in the back of the humvee. He should have dug himself out a real grave, but it was pretty borderline; they had a solid perimeter and were only at 25% watch tonight. Walt kept his eyes closed and his breathing regular.

‘How’s he doing?’ Poke’s voice was very quiet.

Brad’s was just as quiet when he replied, ‘He’ll be okay.’

‘You okay?’

‘Always.’

Poke’s boots went crunching away on the sand. Only one pair of feet moving away. Walt kept quiet, so quiet, because he didn’t want to have to talk to Brad or anyone else about how he was feeling. Especially Brad.

The only person he could have articulated any of this to was Doc, who for obvious reasons was not an okay person to talk to. Which was strange, because Walt knew deep down that Doc _got it_. Right after they’d got lit the fuck up in—in somewhere, some town, Walt couldn’t remember—Doc had made his way around camp, stopping at each humvee in turn and checking in with the guys. It wasn’t like when someone like Encino Man checked in, where you knew he was just going through the motions. Or even the LT, who maybe in another life Walt could have had a beer with. With the LT, you knew he cared but you also knew that he had to be a leader first. But Doc had actually talked about how he was doing to, so everyone around the humvee had known he meant it, and he gave a shit, and he was listening.

In the front seat, Ray stirred in his half-sleep, made an obnoxious yawning noise and fell silent again. Walt held still until he knew Ray was asleep again, just in case he accidentally psychically broadcast his angst into Ray’s mind.

Thinking about Doc caring in the abstract made Walt miserable all over again. Somewhere in the mess of his emotions was a contradiction that he didn’t understand yet. Walt knew he wasn’t slow, but he always had needed a long time to sit on things and chew them over. His dad had always said that was a good trait; _fools rush in where angels fear to tread, Wally_.

He missed Doc, even though he saw him every day. He wanted Doc to hustle him into a private space and touch him again, even though he was cold afterwards and it made Walt sad. He wanted to Doc to take care of him, except when he had been sick and then when they’d come through Nasiriyah Doc _had_ taken care of him and it still wasn’t what Walt wanted.

He didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted to go home. That was about it.

* * *

Gunny Wynn looked at Tim, his friendly, weatherbeaten face unusually serious. He had his dip wedged in his cheek and a long smudge of grey-black grease along his forehead, like he’d wiped his brow with his hand.

‘Word with you in private, Doc?’

Wynn was doing the courtesy of phrasing it like a question, but of course it wasn’t and couldn’t be. Tim rose wordlessly, and they walked together along the camp and down to an empty patch of land looking out over surprisingly green fields. Somewhere Tim could hear a trickle of running water. He always forgot that he wasn’t really in a desert, that there were rich living things here.

‘What do you need?’ Usually at this point Tim would get to hear a tale of jock itch or VD or gastrointestinal distress.

‘This doesn’t come from anyone but me,’ Wynn began. Tim felt the cold fingers of his guilty conscience stirring. ‘And it ain’t disciplinary or likely to be.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Doc. You gotta dial it down with Hasser.’

‘Dial it down,’ Tim said, trying not to give anything away.

‘I mean, live your life,’ said Wynn. ‘I ain’t here to report you. But he’s only a kid, and something about the way he’s moping around has got me to thinking that you’re gonna drop him like a Christmas kitten when we get back home.’

‘You’re giving me relationship advice?’ Tim said. He tried to stare Wynn down, but it was futile. Wynn looked calmly back at him, not at all intimidated.

‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Is it a relationship?’

‘It is what it is. We’re in a fucking warzone. I’m not sending the guy love letters.’

‘He know that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah? If I go to him right now, he’ll tell me it’s just two guys blowing off steam?’

Tim could feel the back of his neck heating up, and he resisted the urge to touch it. If Wynn went to Walt, Walt would crack immediately, unable to lie or dissemble. Whatever resolution was going to happen had to happen right now.

‘I’m not responsible for how he interprets—’

‘Yeah,’ Wynn said, cutting him off, ‘I think you are, and you know you are.’

‘Thanks for the pre-marital counselling, Father,’ Tim began, wanting nothing but for Wynn to stop talking.

‘Shut the hell up,’ Wynn said. There wasn’t any real heat in it and he didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. ‘You’re a better man than this, Doc. We’re gonna go home and life’s gonna go on. Some things you leave behind, some things you have to square away with yourself later. And that’s a fact for you and Hasser too.’

‘You’re making an appeal to conscience?’

‘Just want to see my guys home safe,’ said Wynn, placid once again. ‘If you’re gonna ditch him, let him down easy. And if not, stop leading him around by the nose. He might be the best of us.’

Tim considered a response to the effect that it was no use splitting moral hairs in this pointless war. Gunny Wynn had steel in him, though, and even Tim would only push his luck so far. If Wynn knew, then there was also a chance that the LT knew. Tim respected Nate Fick enough that he wanted any report Wynn made on the subject to be a good one.

He sighed.

‘I’ll talk to Hasser,’ he said.

‘Attaboy,’ said Wynn genially, and took off to amble his way around the perimeter, clucking at the kids like a mother hen. Wynn was a lifer, a career Marine. Tim usually resented that kind of man. He couldn’t resent Gunny Wynn for anything. Just briefly, the thought occurred to Tim that maybe, once upon a time, there had been something of the Walt Hasser about Wynn. Or maybe it was the other way round; with time and seasoning, Hasser might become the kind of competent, forthright NCO that Wynn so clearly was.

_He might be the best of us._

* * *

The walls of the abandoned cigarette factory felt like they were closing in on Tim after so many days and weeks out in the open. How many times had he wished for some measure of privacy, or some shelter from the endless dust and sun? Now that he’d got it, it felt wrong. The only thing that felt right was the hard press of his SAW against his wrist bone, and the way his hand felt holding it.

He moved to the side to let one of the Alpha teams pass. They were heading out on patrol. Tim had other business. Lovell had told him Hasser was around, pointed him in the rough direction. So Tim was prowling the empty rooms and halls, creeping around silent machinery and banks of filing cabinets and abandoned desks. Half hoping to find Hasser, half hoping not to.

Tim recognised Hasser’s gait before he was consciously aware it was him.

‘Walt.’ The name felt strange in Tim’s mouth. Stranger yet was Walt’s guilty flinch hearing it, and the way he looked over his shoulder at Tim. Hopeful, hungry. Sensing the change.

‘Yeah?’ Walt glanced down the hall both ways. Tim wanted to tell him to stop being obviously furtive, because it made him look even more guilty. But the command to _act natural_ had never worked on anyone. Tim walked over and corralled Walt over by the wall, as if they were just having a regular conversation about innocuous things. No lurking in corners. Right there in the open.

‘Gunny Wynn,’ he began slowly, and then stopped. ‘How are you?’ he asked instead.

Walt shrugged. ‘Okay, I guess.’ He had lost some of the haggard look of the past week, although he had also lost some weight. Tim appraised him, trying to appear neither coldly medical nor overtly flirtatious. That didn’t, on balance, leave him much space to work with.

‘You guess or you know?’ Tim pressed, realising as he did so that he sounded like his father. He opted not to follow that line of inquiry. Walt shifted his M1 on its strap.

‘Is anyone okay?’

‘I’m not asking about anyone, I’m asking about you.’

‘Kinda over this whole thing, you know?’ Walt gestured broadly around himself.

‘I know. I’m ready to go home.’

‘Yeah,’ Walt sighed out a long, dreamy breath.

Tim wondered what part of home he was thinking about. He cleared his throat and tried to approach the real topic again. ‘Gunny Wynn suggested that I might be an asshole,’ he said. Walt’s face broke into the tentative smile that he often got when he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to laugh yet. If they were back home, this would be the point in the conversation where Tim would put a hand on Walt’s jaw and give him a quick, warm kiss. He liked that tentative smile. He liked that Walt could still produce it.

‘Did you want me to tell you you’re not?’ Walt asked.

Tim dropped his voice, just for safety.

‘I want you to confirm that I’ve treated you like shit,’ he said, every word bitter on his tongue. Walt’s face fell and the tentative, boyish smile went away. But his eyes were wide and every muscle in his body was holding him apart from Tim. Tim could see that if he said something very tender, Walt would come to him. So he didn’t say anything tender, and just waited for Walt to reply.

‘I don’t think you’re an asshole,’ Walt said slowly. His eyes flicked away from Tim’s face and then came back. He fiddled with a strap, adjusting it.

‘Be honest,’ Tim ordered. Walt gave him a miserable look.

‘If Gunny said,’ he began uncertainly.

‘Jesus Christ, Walt,’ Tim said. ‘Have a fucking opinion.’

‘Fine,’ snapped Walt, as firmly as anyone could snap while half-whispering. ‘You’re being an asshole right now.’

‘Was that so hard?’

‘Yes,’ said Walt. The uncertainty was back. He looked pleadingly at Tim, who was trying to reformulate the problem in his head.

‘If our roles were reversed,’ he said finally, ‘would you treat me the way I’ve treated you?’ He almost spat it out. He hated this shit.

‘No,’ said Walt, a little shocked. Tim grimaced, knowing it to be true.

‘There you go.’ He shrugged and resettled his sidearm, feeling the tension in his neck from weeks of wearing it.

‘I still don’t know—’

‘No, you don’t, and I should have seen that.’

‘Can you just explain to me what this is about?’

‘What this is about,’ repeated Tim, half-mockingly. ‘I’m trying to apologise.’

‘You suck at apologies.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that before.’

'Maybe you should work on that.' Walt had his chin tipped up and his hand was tight on his flak vest. Apparently now was the time he was going to dig in his heels. A be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment.

'Where was this before?' Tim asked, gesturing broadly to all of Walt.

‘You never talked to me like this before,’ said Walt, still with his chin up. He was, Tim thought abstractly, almost beautiful. Perhaps too drained to really make the cut; still, Tim had noticed him from the start and hadn’t yet stopped noticing. He wondered if there was some essential element of Walt’s personality that was coming through and influencing him, because Tim surely had never cared this much for blonds before.

‘You can't let people walk all over you like this. Have some fucking backbone, Hasser.’

Walt’s face passed through about eighteen different emotions. Tim couldn’t read any of them but confusion. The hallway was still empty and Tim wanted it to stay that way, so that he could parse out everything about Walt’s reactions. So that he could properly evaluate his own. As Walt struggled, Tim thought with sudden clarity: _I was expecting him to walk away. Anyone else would have walked away_.

Because Walt wouldn’t, Tim should.

‘Even if I care about them?’ Walt said finally.

‘Especially if you care about them, Jesus.’ The boy would learn, maybe today, that the people closest to you were infinitely capable of hurting you.

'You're telling me to play hardball with people I love.' A little of Walt’s resolute chin was back.

‘Let’s not blow this out of proportion,’ said Tim dryly.

‘I’m not,’ said Walt earnestly, and the corners of his mouth turned down with such cartoonish sorrow that Tim thought for a moment that he was joking. Except that wasn’t Hasser’s style.

‘We shouldn’t talk about this here,’ Tim said. By shouldn’t he meant couldn’t, because the sheer pathos in Walt’s face was making Tim feel dangerously close to sentimental. Sentiment made him nauseous.

‘What?’

‘We’ll talk about it at home.’

‘Okay,’ said Walt, drawing it out uncertainty. ‘But you were the one who—’

‘Get some sleep,’ Tim told him, wanting to offer something kind. ‘And change your damn socks.’ Before Walt could answer, he walked away.

* * *

In the bustle of wives and girlfriends and screaming kids and parents and crying and Kleenex and baggage, half a dozen guys were conspicuously alone. Walt was one. Doc was another. They stood a few feet apart, each mentally mapping a path through the crush to get the hell out and home. Walt was just thinking he might try sneaking around the side, down the fence, when Doc came up next to him and made him jump by speaking too close to his ear.

‘Want to get out of here?’

‘With you?’ Walt asked. Doc gave him a strange look, his eyebrows drawing down and his whole face tightening.

‘Yeah, with me,’ he said. ‘Who else?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Walt, feeling stupid. If it were a video game he’d have dialogue options on his screen and it would be obvious: this is the nice answer, this is the sexy answer, this is the mean answer.

‘Come on, then.’ Doc made his way along the narrow concrete path to the main gate. There were a few cabs idling out on the road, for people who didn’t have anyone to pick them up. For a while Walt had felt bad about the fact that his dad would be working two states over and he wouldn’t have anyone waiting for him. He had pictured having to get home alone. Instead, they slid into a cab and Doc told the driver an address. The radio played some kind of dance pop and Walt realised with a strange jump in his chest that he hadn’t really listened to music for weeks.

‘Hey,’ he called up to the front seat. ‘Hey man, you got a country station?’

‘Sure.’ The driver switched it over and caught Patsy Cline in the middle of a chorus, that Walt picked up under his breath without even thinking about it. He watched the scenery go by, regular American folks doing regular American things. He let himself enjoy the air conditioning. He wondered where they were going, but only a little. He wondered a lot more about whether or not Doc would be interested in kissing him.

‘What do you want?’ Doc said suddenly, startling Walt out of being spacey. ‘For dinner.’

‘For dinner?’

‘Tacos? Italian?’

Walt gave the question some serious thought. He considered every MRE entree he’d had to stomach in the past month, even though remembering them brought the tastes back into his mouth with visceral clarity. And the _textures_.

‘Beer,’ he said eventually, imagining poking a juicy lime slice down the neck of an ice-cold Corona.

Doc gave him an amused look. ‘For dinner?’

‘Hold on, I’m still thinking.’

‘Steak?’ Doc suggested.

‘Oh, hell yeah,’ said Walt, his mouth immediately watering. They were coming up on the centre of the city now, the buildings taller and the traffic busier. The clock on the dashboard said it was almost 5, but absent that intelligence someone could have told Walt it was breakfast time and he would have believed it. He said so out loud.

‘Hey, if you want breakfast we can go to a diner,’ Doc said.

‘Steak is good,’ Walt said hastily.

The cab driver pulled up in a taxi rank.

‘Right here, guys?’

‘Yeah, this is fine.’ Doc handed him a couple of bills. ‘Thanks.’

It was weird walking down a street in regular clothes. Walt was half expecting Sixta to pop out of a Burger King and yell at him. He didn't know where they were going.

'Are we going someplace you know?' he asked tentatively.

'No.' Doc shrugged. 'Got to be something around here, though.'

Walt could see that. They were in a part of town with lots of restaurants and stores, with wide sidewalks and a lot of buses. It wasn't even ten minutes before Doc looked in the window of a place with black and silver signage and a stylised logo of a bull's head that looked like a cattle brand.

'This looks nice,' said Walt hungrily.

'Let's find out.'

Walt found himself in a red leather booth, a beer in front of him and Doc very much present across the table. Getting his lime into his beer took some manoeuvring, but then it was done and Walt had nothing to do with his hands except grip the wet bottle. Doc was right there, and now there were no Portapotties or quiet tents, or shells, or officers, or Trombleys or Stineys, or anything that could be a distraction. He was going to have to talk, Walt realised. He was going to have to make conversation less than 24 hours after they'd flown out of a war zone.

'Don't look so nervous,' Doc said, frowning.

'Sorry.'

'Don't be sorry, either,' said Doc. A peppy blonde waitress came to take their order. As Doc ordered a ribeye and onion rings, Walt tried to figure out whether or not she thought that he and Doc were on a date, or just friends. He couldn’t tell. The thought that she might think they were made him simultaneously warm and embarrassed; as a result, he fumbled his order and knew he was blushing, and Doc watched him with amusement.

‘What are you going to do after this?’ Walt asked hurriedly, trying to fill in the silence and not be awkward.

‘Haven’t decided yet. Go back to school. Maybe teach.’

‘Oh,’ said Walt, trying to imagine Doc teaching a high school class. ‘I meant after lunch, though.’

Doc laughed. Actually, he didn’t laugh so much as say the word _ha_ , but Walt would take it. ‘I have a flight to catch. I need to be at the airport by five.’

‘Oh,’ Walt said again. ‘To where?’

‘You’re full of questions. Chicago.’

‘I like learning about you.’ Walt wanted to take it back as soon as he said it. Except for once Doc looked like he didn’t mind.

‘What about you?’

‘Home,’ said Walt, and he didn’t care how eager he sounded when he said it. ‘Down to Iowa, to my dad’s house.’

‘City or country?’

‘Country, kinda. But we’re near Dubuque.’ Doc looked like he was expecting more. ‘Dad has an auto parts store.’

‘Explains some things about you,’ Doc said slowly, not explaining. Walt couldn’t really ask him to.

Instead, Walt asked, ‘What’s in Chicago?’

Doc gave a weird smile that made him look like he was about to be sick. ‘I’ll find out when I get there.’

‘Mysterious,’ Walt said.

‘It’s complicated.’

Then it was Walt’s turn to feel sick. The way Doc was talking, it sounded like there was someone back home waiting for him. Or perhaps someone who wouldn’t be waiting for him any more. Walt didn’t like the idea that Doc had been cheating on someone who cared about him.

The waitress came back with their food before he could follow the train of thought, and then they were eating like wolves. Walt couldn’t make himself be polite, but Doc wasn’t being polite either. As he ate he circled back to the idea that Doc might be a love rat, like in the radio shows his mom used to listen to when he was a kid. If he was, Walt wanted to know about it now. Just a week ago, Doc had told him to stand up for himself.

He began to say, ‘Listen,’ right as Doc said, ‘Spit it out, Hasser.’ They looked at each other for a moment, Doc’s fork half-way to his mouth.

‘I just—’ Walt said.

‘No, go ahead,’ Doc told him, over the top.

‘If you have someone in Chicago then you’ve been cheating,’ Walt said in a rush, ‘and that’s wrong.’ Walt might not be the smoothest guy around with romance, but his parents taught him right from wrong.

Doc froze, and then he put his fork down.

‘Goddamn,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing like that.’ He sounded annoyed.

‘You told me to stand up for myself,’ Walt reminded him, finding himself annoyed by how annoyed Doc sounded. Jesus. Why was everything difficult?

Doc held up a hand. He picked up his beer with the other hand, then leaned back in his seat. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ he said again. ‘It’s some legal stuff to tie up. Death in the family.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Walt said immediately. He knew what that was like. ‘Were you—was it?’

‘Nobody close to me,’ said Doc. ‘Just some issues with the estate. There’s a chance I’m about to come into a good amount of money, but also a chance that I’m not. You get me?’

‘Yeah,’ said Walt.

Doc laughed. ‘Fuck. My fault for trying to be subtle. Subtlety doesn’t work for me.’

‘No kidding,’ Walt said.

‘I don’t like complications,’ Doc said. ‘This legal stuff is a complication. That’s all, Walt.’ Walt got that little spark again, the one where Doc used his name.

After that, everything was easy. Or, Walt was still nervous but in a good excited way. If he wanted to get lunch with a guy he liked, he could do that. And the steak was good, now that he was actually tasting it. He even ordered dessert, too.

‘Were you getting something?’ he asked.

‘I don’t usually eat sweets,’ said Doc. ‘You go ahead.’ So Walt did. He got a slice of cheesecake, covered in berries and syrup and with a sweet, crispy base that he picked up as it crumbled by pressing it into a little cake with the back of his fork. Even Doc took a couple of bites, pulling the plate into the middle of the table. That really made it look like they were on a date.

Walt said so, very quietly, leaning in so that nobody else would hear.

‘That was the point,’ said Doc. Then like ripping off a bandaid, he said, ‘I’d be into doing this again. If you’re interested.’

‘Yes, please,’ said Walt, confused that Doc couldn’t instantly tell that Walt was desperately interested and had been for ages.

Doc wrote his number down in Sharpie on the back of a restaurant flyer. He wrote TIM BRYAN (DOC) below the number in block capitals, as if Walt might actually forget whose number it was, what with all the people who gave him their phone numbers all the time. His writing was messier than Walt’s, which was pretty bad.

Walt blew on the ink to dry it, folded it in half and slid it into his ruck pocket.

It would take him two weeks to get up the courage to call. Walt would look back on that particular day later with wonder; wonder that he didn’t realise until Doc said it that Doc was taking him out on a date. Wonder that Doc had not only given him a short hug in the middle of the street, but also pressed his mouth quickly to Walt’s temple. Wonder that everything in Iraq had somehow resolved itself into something real and lasting, and that he’d been so blind to everything.

* * *

_One year later_

Walt slammed the door of his truck and sprinted for the front door of his house. The thunderstorm was in full swing; on his way home he’d watched lightning sheet across the sky over the highway and he’d put his foot down. He fumbled his key into the lock and almost fell into the kitchen, dripping. Inside the house the roar of the rain and thunder was muted, and he could hear the metallic chiming sound of rain ricocheting off the drain pipes and the big metal water butt at the side of the house.

‘Whew,’ he said aloud. ‘That’s a good one.’

‘Forget a raincoat?’ Tim asked from the kitchen table. His books covered the surface. There was a smudge of blue pen on his chin, and he was already several sheets into the yellow legal pad that had been brand new that morning.

‘Marines make do,’ said Walt seriously. ‘Have you moved all day?’

‘Once or twice. I can’t reach the coffee maker from here.’ Tim stretched an arm out to demonstrate. Walt went over and switched it on; he wanted coffee and Tim always wanted coffee. On the way past, he leaned in for a kiss and unbuttoned the top button of Tim’s faded green henley.

‘Looks better like that.’ He smiled at Tim’s exasperated eye roll. ‘How are the infectious diseases going?’

‘I’ve spent all afternoon reading about leprosy.’

‘Is that good?’

‘I don’t know any more.’

Walt laughed. He took off his fatigues jacket and started unlacing his boots. ‘I’ll do bacon and eggs?’ At the sound of the word ‘bacon’, Scooter padded arthritically into the kitchen, blinking the sleep from his old eyes.

‘God, yes,’ Tim said. He paused to scritch Scooter’s ears as the dog walked past the chair on his way to Walt. ‘I should probably be cooking for you.’

‘Med school’s harder than teaching kids to shoot straight,’ Walt said. You couldn’t pay him to go back to school. He gave Scooter some attention, then washed his hands at the sink and turned on the stove. As always, he almost hit his head on the fan above the stove. There wasn’t much room to get around.

The kitchen was small because the house was small; two bedrooms and a scrap of yard, and an unfinished basement that they were going to renovate eventually. Tim’s inheritance had covered most of the downpayment, though, and Walt had had a nest egg too. So the house could have been even smaller and Walt would still have loved it because they had bought it together. Right now, he could lean against the counter and still be close enough to Tim to touch him. Walt and his dad had installed the new counters together one weekend; his dad’s peace offering in the first tentative few months after Walt had said, _so, dad, I’m moving in with this guy from work and it’s pretty serious_.

Tim had already gone back to his book, murmuring, ‘oh, I see,’ and scratching another note into his legal pad. Walt laid rashers of bacon in the pan and let them start cooking while he sliced bread for toast.

‘What comes after leprosy?’ he asked.

‘Secondary infection, nerve damage, loss of extremities,’ said Tim absently, still writing.

‘No, in your book,’ Walt said, smiling. He cracked four eggs into the pan. Tim flipped a few pages ahead.

‘Leptospirosis.’

‘Never heard of it.’

Tim didn’t reply. Instead, he closed his books and stacked them off to the side of the table, then got out plates and cutlery.

‘Beer?’

‘Yeah.’ Walt turned the bacon, mouth watering even though he was kind of thinking about leprosy in the back of his mind still. He figured that when Tim graduated and became a doctor, he was going to have to hear about gross body things all the time, so he might as well get used to it now. It was almost enough to make him miss the days when his feet were the grossest medical thing he could imagine.

He checked on the toast, and Tim grabbed his ass as he bent over to look under the broiler.

‘Real mature,’ he told Tim, laughing. Tim grinned and put the beer on the table, then grabbed the spatula to turn the eggs. ‘No,’ said Walt, grabbing it back. ‘You know you always break the yolks.’

‘I remember when you did what you were told,’ said Tim.

‘I was young and dumb. It was before I knew you needed help to make eggs.’

‘It was last year. You were twenty-three,’ Tim said. ‘And I make great scrambled eggs.’

‘Not on purpose,’ Walt told him, sliding two perfect fried eggs onto a plate, adding bacon and toast, and handing it to Tim. He made up his own plate. 'It doesn't count if you fumble an omelette and call it scrambled eggs.'

‘Good thing I won’t be a surgeon, then.'

‘Good thing,’ Walt agreed. He sat down to eat, and as he broke one golden yolk with his fork he realised that the rain was stopping. The roar died down, and then there were just a few drops hitting the window. The heavy grey half-darkness outside began to lift immediately, in that peculiar, changeable way of summer storms. Walt reminded himself to get the ladder out tomorrow morning and check the patch of roof over the bathroom that need replacing.

‘Going to be a nice day tomorrow,’ Tim said. He stretched one leg out under the small table and pressed his calf against Walt’s. In the corner by the stove, Scooter settled down in the residual warmth with a happy dog sigh.

The evening sun burst through the clouds, turning the kitchen golden. Walt’s heart did the thing it did a lot around Tim, where it rolled over in his chest and he had to stop himself from saying something really goofy. Instead, he just reached across the table and held Tim’s free hand while they ate.

‘Yup,’ he said happily, ‘it is.’


End file.
